Posted on 07/23/2016 7:46:56 PM PDT by Hojczyk
For these post-Reagan Republicans, conservative was passé. They needed to be “compassionate conservatives,” as if there were something vaguely inhumane about the liberty enterprise. Government was no longer the “necessary evil” envisioned by the Framers, the butt of the Gipper’s aforementioned quip. It was our beneficent guardian who “has got to move” whenever “somebody hurts.”
These Republicans doubled the national debt before Obama came along to double it again. The new and improved GOP swelled the size and scope of government; created new entitlements even as the existing ones were bankrupting us; enacted “campaign-finance reform” well aware that it flouted the First Amendment; and derided their own base as racist xenophobes for resisting amnesty for illegal aliens. And was there any Obama overreach that they weren’t happy to foot the bill for?
Take away the conservatism, the limited-government constitutionalism, the devotion to liberty, the fiscal discipline, the clear-eyed recognition of America’s enemies, and what are you left with? A Republican party whose only real boast is that it can do statism with more adult moderation than the hard Left that has captured the Democratic party. To the extent that, a generation ago, “Republican” was fairly thought synonymous with “conservative,” it thus became a party “Republican” in name only — a party in which all principles were negotiable.
That made it a party ripe to be taken over by Donald Trump. But what is now officially Trump’s party has not been my party for quite some time.
Whoever wins, I know that come January, I will be in the conservative opposition to a statist administration, and in search of a new party to call home.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Trump who funded his own campaign has already demonstrated ‘fiscal’ conservatism... These government jocks have a real bad itch.
No, you’re a liberal. It did work.
No I’m not and I’m not minded to take insults from someone who showed up here four weeks ago and just got off probation.
It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.